LX 2048

Driving with the top down in a hazmat suit – how very 2020!

(2020) Science Fiction (Quiver) James D’Arcy, Anna Brewster, Delroy Lindo, Gabrielle Cassi, Juliet Aubrey, Gina McKee, Jay Hayden, Linc Hand, Ronin Zaki Moshe, Majus Motiejus Prokopas. Directed by Guy Moshe

 

You can tell the state of a society by how it perceives the way the world will end. Our society, chronically depressed and stressed, turns out apocalyptic movies that have no explosions, no meteors, no heroic astronauts…just a world where everyone plays on a virtual Realm waiting for things to come to a close.

Adam Bird (D’Arcy) sees the end coming sooner. He works for a virtual reality hardware firm that supplies the hardware necessary to enter The Realm, the virtual reality utopia that everyone is plugged into. He can see the company’s future and it is grim – the hardware will soon be rendered obsolete by an implanted chip that will do the same thing faster, more efficiently, and less expensively. Adam is a voice crying in the wilderness – quite literally. He’s the only one to actually go into the office. Most people work from home and attend meetings via The Realm (sound familiar?)

But that isn’t even the worst news in Adam’s day. His doctor (McKee) has informed him that his heart is failing, and soon. But no worries – he has three kids and because he and his wife Reena (Brewster) bothered to procreate (most people don’t) he is eligible for Premium 3 insurance, which in the event of the death of either him or his spouse provides for a clone replacement, with all their memories intact. The two spouses even get to tweak their genetically enhanced replacement mates with characteristics that are more in tune with what they want – more attentive, sexier, less annoying and so on.

It’s a pretty bleak world – one of the reasons nobody goes out to work is because sunlight has become toxic, likely due to the erosion of the ozone. The population copes by taking state-mandated tranquilizers – LithiumX – which numbs them to the fact that life has become an absolute cluster muck. And Adam being something of a rebel, refuses to take his medication. So when Reena catches him having a go at a virtual sex doll, she blows a gasket and tosses him out on his tush. But with the company in danger of failing, Adam knows he has to figure out a way to keep it afloat long enough for the insurance to cash in and support his estranged wife and children.

There’s an awful lot of concepts thrown into the mix here, and one has to give the filmmakers credit for trying to tackle them all. There’s an intelligence to the movie that is more often than not missing from science fiction movies, and that’s refreshing. That doesn’t mean the movie is always successful in what it’s trying to do.

D’Arcy actually does a pretty bang-up job as Adam, and the movie totally rests on his shoulders so that’s a good thing. Often, he is having conversations with people who are online; we aren’t invited to The Realm so mostly what we see is Adam shouting in an empty conference room. It is a bit disconcerting, but I suspect that given the situation we’ve all been in the past several months we all feel a little bit like that’s exactly what we’re doing.

The problem here is that Adam is not really a pleasant guy. There’s a reason everyone’s on Lithium; it’s just too much for the psyche to handle, and Adam with everything going on – his marriage failing, his health failing, his business failing, the world failing – is losing it and not just a little bit. He’s desperately trying to have a conversation with Reena trying to express his fears but she isn’t having it, and so his attempts to reach out degenerate into shouting matches and vicious put-downs. “I can’t believe I ever loved you,” he cries out during one such exchange.

The movie tries to take a sharp left turn late in the movie but this is ill-advised. There really is enough going on to keep the discussion group going for ages without throwing in a final twist. The last 20 minutes virtually (no pun intended) undoes all the goodwill that the first eighty minutes generated. That’s a shame because despite being a low-budget affair, the production design is pretty aces – it looks like it has a budget probably 10 to 20 times what it actually had, and the ideas that it’s grappling with are very relevant right now, with climate change, online addiction, drug addiction, the deterioration of relationships in an increasingly plugged-in world and the ethics of medical technology exceeding our maturity to handle them.

I almost forgot to mention Delroy Lindo who has a small but crucial role as a reclusive scientist, and all I can say is that even his less visible roles are intriguing. Delroy Lindo is undeniably a cool mofo, and we are reminded of that every time he pops up onscreen.

In any case, this is a movie with lofty aspirations that occasionally achieves them, but ultimately shoots itself in the foot when it tries to insert a twist that wasn’t really needed. Fans of thoughtful science fiction will find much to chew on here. Those who prefer their movies a little bit less crammed with ideas might find it indigestible.

REASONS TO SEE: Lots of great ideas – almost too many.
REASONS TO AVOID: The characters are all so contemptible it’s hard to root for any of them.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity and some sexual content..
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: D’Arcy is best known for his work in the MCU playing the human Jarvis in the Agent Carter miniseries.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/29/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 41% positive reviews, Metacritic: 61/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Gattaca
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: The Artist’s Wife

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Logan

The claws are out.

(2017) Superhero (20^th Century Fox/Marvel) Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Boyd Holbrook, Dafne Keen, Stephen Merchant, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Richard E. Grant, Eriq LaSalle, Elise Neal, Quincy Fouse, Rey Gallegos, Krzysztof Soszynski, Stephen Dunleavy, Daniel Bernhardt, Ryan Sturz, Jason Genao, Hannah Westerfield, Bryant Tardy, Ashlyn Casalegno, Alison Fernandez. Directed by James Mangold

 

The end of an era can be a cause for celebration, a cause for sadness or both. Hugh Jackman announced prior to the release of the latest X-Men Universe solo film that this would be his last go-round as Wolverine, a run that has lasted 17 years and nine appearances in the part, the most for an actor playing a single character. It’s pretty hard to imagine anyone else playing the role.

It is the near-future and mutants have been decimated; they are either dead or in hiding. Logan (Jackman), once known as Wolverine, is hiding in plain sight in a border town in Mexico. He drives a limo in the evenings; by day he drinks…a lot. His mutant healing ability has begun to fail him and the adamantium in his bones has begun to poison him; he’s dying. So too is Professor X (Stewart), the powerful telepath who is beset by encroaching dementia which sometimes leads to terrible psychic blasts that literally stop time. Logan takes care of his old mentor along with Caliban (Merchant), an albino mutant tracker with a severe allergy to sunlight.

Logan is approached by Gabriela (Rodriguez), a nurse who wants Logan to drive Laura (Keen), a little girl to a place in Canada. Logan’s heroic days are behind him though and he turns her down but events conspire to bring Laura and Logan together and put them on the run, chased by the ruthless Pierce (Holbrook) who works for the even more ruthless Dr. Rice (Grant). Logan soon discovers that Laura is a lot like him…a lot. She has his healing ability – and his claws. The secret behind who Laura is will send Logan on a last quest with Professor X and lead to a bloody climax in the woods just south of the Canadian border.

It seems almost impossible but the Fox X-Men movies of late…well, two of the last three of them – the R-rated ones – have actually been as good if not better than the MCU movies. Deadpool took comic book movies to the R rating with a thumb to the nose and a wink to the audience, whereas Logan is a much more serious affair.

Jackman looks a lot older than he actually is here; it’s not the years, Logan might say, it’s the mileage. Jackman makes Logan a bitter, battered man who has lost hope. He is still loyal to Charles Xavier, but has essentially retreated from a world that hates him. Logan has always been a cynical character but here Jackman makes it less a defense mechanism than surrender.

There aren’t a lot of familiar faces in supporting roles other than Stewart who lost more than 20 pounds to give Xavier an air of fragility. Keen acquits herself well in the very physical role of Laura, impressive for a child actress – heck, any actress for that matter. Former St. Elsewhere star LaSalle makes a rare screen appearance in a very memorable role of a farmer who befriends Logan with devastating consequences.

The tone is bleak, exceptionally so. In many ways it reminded me of a Western – other reviewers have compared it with some justification with Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven although the filmmakers themselves seem to be purposely inviting comparisons to the classic Western Shane, clips of which play during the course of the film. Given the mainly Southwestern setting and the overall tone, it is justified in being classified a superhero Western.

In many ways, the movie is well-timed. The mutants of the comic books have often been used as allegories for any oppressed minority and in this case, one could argue that they are stand-ins for immigrants particularly of the Muslim variety. It is also very much outside the box; generally we see heroes at the beginning of their careers when they make it to the multiplex; here we see a hero at the end of his. I won’t say this is the best superhero movie of all time, but it certainly stands out in a crowded field these days. It’s not for everybody – this is not a movie for children or the squeamish. It is serious cinematic art and demands a whole lot from the audience, not the least of which is their grey matter. Not something, sadly, that many modern film audiences seem willing to give.

REASONS TO GO: Despite the carnage, the movie actually gives the viewer a lot to think about.  It plays a little bit like a Western.
REASONS TO STAY: The violence may be too intense for some.
FAMILY VALUES: Let’s face it; the violence here is pretty extreme and there’s a lot of it. There’s also plenty of profanity as well as some brief nudity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie opened in 4,071 theaters in the United States, the most ever for an R-rated film.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/12/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 92% positive reviews. Metacritic: 77/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: X-Men: Days of Future Past
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Frantz

Resident Evil: Retribution

Go ask Alice.

(2012) Horror Action (Screen Gems) Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Sienna Guillory, Kevin Durand, Shawn Roberts, Colin Salmon, Johann Urb, Boris Kodjoe, Li Bingbing, Aryana Engineer, Robin Kasyanov, Ofilio Portillo, Oded Fehr, Megan Charpentier, Mika Nakashima, Ray Olubowale, Toshio Oki, Takato Yamashito, Ali Larter. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Some fights you can’t run away from. Sooner or later you have to take the fight to your enemy because otherwise you’ll be running until you’re caught and/or killed. Sometimes those fights will cost you more than you know.

After the events of Resident Evil: Afterlife Alice (Jovovich) has been taken prisoner by the evil Umbrella Corporation and is being interrogated by former ally turned enemy (thanks to a parasite buried in her chest) Jill Valentine (Guillory). She escapes with the help of Ada Wong (Bingbing) who is one of the chief operatives of Albert Wesker (Roberts), the evil head of the Umbrella Corporation. However, he is no longer in charge; the computer program Red Queen, activated after the fall of The Hive has taken over and is at war with humanity – and she is winning.

Alice and Ada are in an Umbrella cloning facility where several environments were created to work out different scenarios to T-Virus infection protocols. Wesker sends in a strike team to retrieve Alice and Ada and also Becky (Engineer), a cloned little girl who operated as a daughter to a cloned Alice in a Raccoon City scenario. Make sense? Don’t sweat it.

Anyway the strike team along with Alice and Ada are up against hordes of mutants, Jill Valentine as well as clones of Rain Ocampo (Rodriguez) and Carlos Olivera (Fehr). They will have to fight their way through simulations of Moscow, Tokyo and Raccoon City. The now-fully human Alice will have to rely on her wits and her indomitable will to survive in order to get out of the base alive and once they do, a final battle on the surface awaits in which friend becomes foe, foe becomes friend and the world prepares for a last stand in the most unlikely of places.

The thing that has made this series so spectacular is not just the videogame franchise it’s based on but on Milla Jovovich’s interpretation of Alice. Jovovich, because of her appearances in a lot of sci-fi, horror and action movies, is sometimes underrated as an actress (much like Kate Beckinsale is) but she really has a great deal of screen presence and the focus is entirely on her, which gives the filmmakers smart points. Then again, Anderson is married to her so he probably knows her abilities better than any other.

The movie is like a non-stop chase scene, beginning with the spectacular opening sequence in which Alice’s capture is done in reverse sequence going back to the final moments of Afterlife. It’s imaginative, far more so than one would have expected from a franchise that’s supposed to play to a less-discerning crowd. While the sequence following that opening which consists of cloned Alice, cloned Carlos and Becky playing house is a bit confusing, the rest of the movie takes off at warp speed. Non-stop battles between humans with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ammo and increasingly grotesque mutants will more than satisfy the entertainment quotient.

The Resident Evil film series has been the only successful franchise (or standalone film for that matter) to capture the nature of the videogame that inspired it. While it doesn’t compare to playing the game and having that interactive element that is missing in a film, it is as close as film is going to come to that element simply because of the frenetic pacing and touches that less attentive directors might miss. One gets a sense that Anderson plays a lot of videogames.

I’m not sure how much farther they can take this franchise. There are after all only so many ways you can go here until it starts to get repetitive and it is absolute death for a franchise such as this to repeat itself – even the Friday the 13^th franchise fell into that trap. They do seem to be leading to a climactic battle and the next movie, scheduled for release on September 12, 2014 may be the climax of the series. If so, they’ll have a fairly high bar set for them in order to make the series go out with a bang, which I sure hope it does rather than the fizzle that it could easily go out with.

WHY RENT THIS: Mindless fun. Jovovich has made the role of Alice iconic in horror films.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Kind of been there, done that.

FAMILY VALUES:  Lots and lots and lots of violence. And I mean lots.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Jovovich is the only actor to appear in every Resident Evil film to date.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: Along with outtakes, there’s a nifty interactive database that allows viewers to explore the world of the franchise through bios, video clips and more. There’s also a look at Nakashima, the lead Japanese zombie and a reunion of cast members from previous installments in the series.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $240.2M on a $65M production budget.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Silent Hill

FINAL RATING: 6.5/10

NEXT: Six Days of Darkness 2013 concludes!

Tabloid

Joyce McKinney strikes a pose.

(2010) Documentary (Sundance Selects) Joyce McKinney, Jackson Shaw, Peter Tory, Kent Gavin, Troy Williams, Dr. Hong. Directed by Errol Morris

Some stories are too good to be true. Some are so weird that they could only be true. Some are both – and those are so rare that when they happen, it takes a master documentarian to chronicle them.

Joyce McKinney was a beauty pageant winner (Miss Wyoming World) who, during a stay in Utah, fell in love with a young Mormon man named Kirk Anderson. By all accounts, the feeling was mutual although his parents, devout Mormons, disapproved of the free-spirited McKinney quite acutely. One day, by McKinney’s reckoning, he just up and disappeared – vanished without a trace.

Stung and still deeply in love, she went to Los Angeles and hired a private detective who traced Anderson to England where he was on a mission for the Church – something most Mormon males aspire to. She gets it into her head that Kirk has been brainwashed and sets off to England to indulge in her own brand of de-programming.

Aided by a close friend named Keith May, a bodyguard (who quickly pulled out of the venture) and a pilot named Jackson Shaw (who also pulled out when he discovered what was really going on), she made plans to spirit her love away to a Devon cottage and after a weekend of intense lovemaking and gourmet meals, he made plans to marry her right away and went back to collect his things.

Or, if you believe Anderson’s account, she kidnapped him at gunpoint, shackled him to a bed in a Devon cottage, attempted to seduce him and when that failed, raped him repeatedly after which he lulled her into thinking he wanted to marry her and called the police the moment he got free.

McKinney was later arrested and incarcerated. A story like this even in 1977 was too juicy and too irresistible for the tabloids to pass up and they carried stories of the Case of the Manacled Mormon, as it was referred to at the time. McKinney and May were later released on bail and became quasi-celebrities (McKinney showing up to the London premiere of Saturday Night Fever where she was spotted with John Travolta). However when the crush of the press became too much, McKinney and her partner-in-crime fled the country, disguised as mimes. Yes, mimes!

While in the United States, competing newspapers (The Daily Mail and the Mirror) both sent reporters to try and get the story that was Joyce McKinney. While she allowed the Daily Mail the interview rights, the Mirror sent a journalist who dug into her past and discovered…nude pictures. These were splashed all over the rag’s pages, along with allegations of selling her body for money. There were so many stories out there that nobody really knew who the real Joyce McKinney was.

Neither will you after viewing this movie but for once, that’s a good thing. We really get only one viewpoint as to the events depicted here – McKinney’s (Anderson, quite wisely I think, declined to be interviewed for the film as he has for all other interviews about the incident). We don’t even get Morris’ viewpoint which is something he’s notorious for. He is one of the most objective documentarians alive. Whether he thought McKinney raped Anderson or had a tryst with him he keeps to himself.

I’ll be honest, early on I was believing McKinney’s version. She seemed to be so effervescent, so sweet and so believable. However the more she talked, the less she seemed to make sense and after a short while you begin to understand she’s a totally unreliable witness. Da Queen called her cuckoo and she might actually be, but the longer the film goes, the more bizarre it gets.

Because there’s only one point of view, we really don’t get compelling evidence that Anderson’s version is the right one. Peter Tory, a reporter for the Daily Mail, opines that the truth is probably somewhere in between the two stories – that there were some consensual elements that Anderson felt prudent to hide, but that somewhere along the way he got cold feet particularly when it came to marrying McKinney, which she clearly believed was about to happen.

This is one of the most fascinating and compelling documentaries you’re ever likely to see, and while it isn’t a game changer like, say Capitalism: A Love Story and An Inconvenient Truth, it is going to at least keep your interest and stay with you long after the film is over.

REASONS TO GO: Fascinating stuff

REASONS TO STAY: It just keeps getting weirder, and weirder, and weirder…

FAMILY VALUES: There’s some sexual content and nudity.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Morris uses a technique called the Interrotron, in which he uses mirrors to give his interview subjects a face to respond to rather than speaking to a blank lens.

HOME OR THEATER: Certainly well-suited to home theater for those who prefer their titillation in private.

FINAL RATING: 7.5/10

TOMORROW: Bruce Almighty

Resident Evil: Afterlife

A triple treat for Milla Jovovich fans!

(2010) Sci-Fi Horror Action (Screen Gems) Milla Jovovich, Aly Larter, Kim Coates, Shawn Roberts, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Spencer Locke, Boris Kodjoe, Wentworth Miller, Sienna Guillory, Kacey Barnfield, Norman Yeung, Fulvio Cecere, Ray Olubuwale.  Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

The term “popcorn movies” refers to movies that are kind of lightweight, don’t require a lot of thought and are thoroughly entertaining. For some critics, popcorn movies are a dirty word. For moviegoers however, they are often the reason they go to the multiplex in the first place.

Alice (Jovovich), the superhuman T-virus recipient of the Umbrella Corporation, invades their Tokyo facility with a small army of her clones in order to take out Albert Wesker (Roberts), the malevolent CEO who unleashed the horror of undead flesh eaters on the world and effectively instituted Armageddon.

Wesker escapes but not before infecting Alice with an antidote to the T-Virus, effectively taking away all her superhuman attributes and rendering her human once again. At a crossroads, she decides to fly to Alaska to link up with the friends she sent up there to find Arcadia, the reputed safe haven for non-infected humans. Instead, she is attacked by her friend Claire Redfield (Larter) who has a strange device strapped on her. Alice manages to defeat Claire and take off the device, but Claire has lost most of her memories of what happened to her teammates that went up there with her.

They decide to follow the Arcadia signal which is now down in Los Angeles. There they find a group of survivors in a high security prison surrounded by zombies. The ragtag band is led by Luther West (Kodjoe), a former pro basketball player. Among them is Bennett (Coates), a self-centered former film producer, Yong (Yeung) his assistant, Crystal Waters (Barnfield), a former actress, Angel (Peris-Mencheta) a mechanic and incarcerated in the prison, Chris Redfield (Miller), Claire’s brother (small world, ain’t it).

Alice finds out that Arcadia is actually a tanker that has been moving up and down the West Coast, picking up survivors as it goes along. The plan is then to get themselves there and try to make it past the horde of survivors that surrounds them, among whom is the Executioner, a gigantic zombie carrying a gigantic hammer.

Chris claims to know an alternative way out. First, they would need to get a mobile infantry vehicle ready which Angel, Bennett and Yong are tasked to do. Second, they would need to reinforce the front gate to buy them more time to get ready, which is Luther and Claire’s job. Finally, they needed weapons and Chris, Crystal and Alice go to the armory to retrieve them.

However, their time is running out. Zombies are beginning to find ways into the prison through the sewers. The gates are failing. They are about to be betrayed from within. And once they make it to Arcadia, what is it that they are going to find there? New hope? Or a new betrayal?

Anderson, who directed the original Resident Evil and has written or co-written all of the movies in the franchise, returns to the director chair for the second time and takes the series, which had begun to look moribund after the last two movies, and revitalizes it. The action moves at a frenetic pace here and the opening Tokyo sequence is one of the best in the entire series in terms of mayhem.

One of the main reasons for seeing any of the Resident Evil movies is Jovovich. She is a genuine action star, as good as Linda Hamilton in her day or Angelina Jolie currently. Jovovich does most of her own stunts, but also is beautiful and charismatic onscreen. Going back to her days in The Fifth Element she has become one of the more reliable actresses when it comes to action movies. She’s also capable of dramatic acting, although she doesn’t get many of those sorts of roles these days.

I might have liked to have a bit more exposition in terms of some of the mutant zombies. The Executioner, for example, just shows up at the prison gate. How did he get so huge? What’s his backstory? Gamers might know the answer, or they might not care but a movie audience requires a bit more substance.

The movie kicks ass, which for the most part is all anybody picking up a disc or streaming it is after. Who’s gonna argue with a small group of attractive people kicking zombie and monster ass? Not me, I can tell you. The movie works the way it’s supposed to and leaves room for a sequel that brings back Jill Valentine (Guillory), reason enough to make fans of the series giddy. Although a giddy gamer can be a site far more terrifying than any flesh eating zombie.

WHY RENT THIS: High octane action and Jovovich make a lethal combination.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Not a lot of character development and monsters show up without explanation other than for kick-ass value.

FAMILY VALUES: Big time violence, some fairly foul language and a few disturbing images make this one I’d think twice about showing to smaller kids.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This was the first film of the series to be released in IMAX and also the highest grossing film of the series to date.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: While there isn’t much on the DVD in terms of extras, the Blu-Ray has a trivia track as well as a picture-in-picture feature (Undead-Vision) that is one of the better of these type offered. There’s also a nice nod to the gamers who make up the core of the RE audience with a feature on them called “Pwning the Undead: Gamers of the Afterlife.”

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $296.2M on a $60M production budget; the movie was a big hit.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Captain America: The First Avenger